The invention relates to a method as claimed in the preamble of claim 1. The invention further relates to a milking machine which is suitable for performing said method.
Such a method is known from patent application EP-A-0 091 892. In order to prevent animals from being milked too frequently, at an animal""s visit to the milking parlour, the time elapsed since its last milking is compared with a fixed minimum time interval. Thus it is decided whether or not the animal should be milked. This has the disadvantage that neither mutual differences between the animals to be milked nor changes occurring with an animal in the course of time are taken into account. From patent application WO-A-95/35028 it is known, when such a method is used, to define each time again the predetermined time for each animal. Said method has the disadvantage of being rather cumbersome.
The invention aims at improving such a method. According to the invention, this is achieved by the measures described in the characterizing part of claim 1. The invention is based on the insight that, by classifying the animals in groups with a predetermined time per group, specific conditions of the animals can be taken into account to a sufficient extent, without the method becoming too cumbersome and its application becoming too time-consuming for the user.